... but esy of dispense;
He kepte that he wan in pestilence;
For gold in physike is a cordial;
Therefore he loved gold in special.

Chaucer deals tenderly with the lawyers; yet, granting his sergeant of the
law discretion and wisdom, a knowledge of cases even "from the time of
King Will," and fees and perquisites quite proportional, he adds,

Nowher so besy a man as he ther n' as,
And yet he seemed besier than he was.


HIS PRESENTATIONS OF WOMAN.--Woman seems to find hard judgment in this
work. Madame Eglantine, the prioress, with her nasal chanting, her
English-French, "of Stratford-atte-Bow," her legion of smalle houndes, and
her affected manner, is not a flattering type of woman's character, and
yet no doubt she is a faithful portrait of many a prioress of that day.

And the wife of Bath is still more repulsive. She tells us, in the
prologue to her story, that she has buried five husbands, and, buxom
still, is looking for the sixth. She is a jolly _compagnon de voyage_, had
been thrice to Jerusalem, and is now seeking assoil for some little sins
at Canterbury. And the host's wife, as he describes her, is not by any
means a pleasant helpmeet for an honest man. The host is out of her
hearing, or he would not be so ready to tell her character:

I have a wif, tho' that she poore be;
But of her tongue a blabbing shrew is she,